Progressivism has now progressed to the point that it wants to be the pope — and not only of Catholics but of the whole world.First Hillary Clinton declares her job is to change “deep-seated” religious beliefs around the world that interfere with abortion rights.This week, Frank Bruni, fresh from asserting with approval that Mitchell Gold wants to make Christians take homosexuality off their sin list, decides to attack the Catholic Church for committing the primal sin of patriarchy. “Catholicism Undervalues Women.” The pope is always a man!

Likening Pope Francis’s call for equal pay for equal work to a Pringles vendor decrying obesity, Bruni wrote: “But the Church’s refusal to follow some other Christian denominations and ordain women undermines any progress towards equality that it trumpets or tries. Sexism is embedded in its structure, its flow chart. Men but not women get to preside at mass.”

I had two reactions to Frank Bruni, speaking as a Catholic woman. First: Hey, Frank, lay off our fathers! Some of us appreciate men who commit themselves sacrificially to the service of God and God’s people. The collapse of civilized masculinity is one of the unacknowledged crises of our time. Priests are not ministers or rabbis. They are not first and foremost knowledgeable teachers of religion, like clergymen in many other denominations; they are in themselves a sacrament, a making visible of God’s grace in the world, and the source (by the grace of God) of the sacrament of the Eucharist that unites us each Sunday. God did not just send a Holy Spirit to save us; He became a man, who died for our sins. Each Sunday, and in the confessional, the priest stands as an image of Jesus Christ for us.My second reaction: Frank Bruni, please stop insulting the free will of millions of American Catholic women. We were fortunate enough to be born free; we do not need the self-appointed clergy of the Holy Church of Secular Progressivism imposing its morality on us. (Frank would probably be surprised to learn that 37 percent of young Catholic women who attend Mass, and go to confession, support the Church’s teaching fully.)

The forces for gay marriage are powerful. You have been their hero in the past, when gay people were not so powerful. The tables are turned now, as I think is clear to everyone. The LGBT community has built a powerful cultural, legal, and political movement. They are not helpless or friendless. They do not need you to distort the Constitution to win the right to live as they choose. We who believe in the traditional understanding of marriage do need your help. We live at a time when our livelihoods are under new attack, when our standing as equal citizens is under attack, when the system of ideas and the deep human realities that gave rise to marriage for millennia are now being dismissed as mere bigotry, as irrational, incomprehensible hatred.

Let me offer you four reasons why you should reject the idea that marriage equality requires all states to treat gay unions as marriages.

1. It is not true that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are equal. Not all sexual relationships are equal, even if they are loving and committed. Same-sex couples have to deal with the preference that the majority has for opposite-sex relationships, ranging from mama’s slight mourning for the family her son will likely never have to Westboro Baptist’s awful, crude, ugly, and unchristian hatred. Opposite-sex couples have the task of managing the reality that from the about age 14 until the woman ages out around 45, every single act of sex could make new life. Nothing the Supreme Court says or does about marriage will change these realities, but importing gay marriage into our Constitution will unleash a cavalcade of consequences for traditional believers.

2. The equality line will require continual policing, because it is based on an untruth about human nature. Maintaining the idea that there is no significant difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples will require actively suppressing the reality that the potential for new life in opposite-sex unions is both morally and socially significant, that it colors the meaning not only of marital unions but of most every sexual interaction between male and female. Of course we will notice that sex makes babies, but every time we do, we will have to twist our heads in a pretzel to think of the ways same-sex unions and opposite-sex unions are the same and to make those the significant features of marriage.

3. This policing of the equality line will fall the heaviest on those most committed to the older view of marriage, that it is deeply rooted in the reality that society must bring male and female together to make the future happen; that marriage is more than a relationship, it is a social institution with purposes larger than the intentions of the young couple in love, that it exists to channel erotic love in such a way that men and women can live together across the gender divide, and share the task of loving and raising their children. This means that sustaining marriage privately, without public or governmental approval, will become immeasurably harder, as the portions of society most committed to marriage, classically understood, become consumed with the task of figuring out how they survive the hatred and dhimmitude directed their way. When the solicitor general of the United States concedes that the argument he is making may lead to stripping Christian schools of their tax-exempt status, you know we are not making things up, or whining, or complaining for no reason. If we want to get to live and let live, we need your help to not constitutionalize the Human Rights Campaign’s sexual morality.

Senator Marco Rubio, one of our most attractive and charismatic leaders in the rising generation, just announced he’s running for president. So naturally he’s being peppered with the one question uppermost in the minds of American voters: What do you think of gay marriage?

Rubio is getting this hit, in part, because he’s trying to negotiate a Third Way: He’s for traditional marriage but will “respect” the rights of states to disagree. He thinks states should have the right to decide the definition of marriage, but (unlike Ted Cruz) he refused to sign onto an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to leave the definition of marriage to the states, and he says he will “respect” whatever the Supreme Court decides.

Sensing weakness, the mainstream media like nothing more than to swarm around his third-wayness. So now Fusion asks Rubio that question that is always so urgent for a president of the United States: Would you attend a gay wedding?

I kind of wish he had pulled a Senator Rand Paul on this reporter. Do you really think people shouldn’t have the right to keep their jobs if they oppose gay marriage? Do you believe in live and let live, or do you believe in using gay marriage as a club to hurt ordinary Americans who happen to disagree?

But he chose to answer the question with great dignity and kindness. The video is here.

“If there’s somebody that I love that’s in my life, I don’t necessarily have to agree with their decisions or the decisions they’ve made to continue to love them and participate in important events,” he told the interviewer, Jorge Ramos. “Ultimately, if someone that you care for and is part of your family has decided to move in one direction or another or feels that way because of who they love, you respect that because you love them,” he said.

Rubio compared it to attending “second marriages” after divorce, which the Catholic Church teaches are attempts to consecrate adultery. “If someone gets divorced, I’m not going to stop loving them or having them a part of our lives,” he said.

What’s happening right now in Indiana is a key inflection point: will the Left succeed in silencing GOP leaders on religious liberty like they have on gay marriage?

Please read the short essay below from ThePulse2016.com I wrote, and then join me in whatever venue you have – your Facebook page, your radio show, a candidate forum, a letter to the editor, an Op Ed – to ask Republican candidates for president this key question: Why is Mike Pence the only Republican defending Indiana’s new religious liberty bill?

God’s blessing on you and our country,

Maggie

Will Any GOP Candidates Step Up to the Plate for Religious Liberty?Mike Pence is the only Republican defending Indiana law

Something very important is happening right now in Indiana. Pay attention: The Democrats are attempting to use their power in the mainstream media to get Republicans to retreat and mute the GOP on religious liberty or face being labelled anti-gay.

Last year, the Left succeeded so well with this tactic on a similar RFRA bill in Arizona, they even got Mitt Romney and John McCain to denounce the bill.

How much of the fabric of classic American civilization will GOP politicians be willing to let go without a fight? This tactic will not only be used on what the Left decides is a gay rights issue. Emboldened by their success in getting Republicans to retreat, the Democrats are now applying the same tactic to the Hyde Amendment language (see the human trafficking bill as the first of a series of attempts to get Republicans to retreat on opposition to taxpayer-financed abortion) and to scuttle the 20-week ban on abortion, which was supposed to have been voted on and passed by the Jan. 22 March for Life. Mere fear of being called “pro-rape,” an absurd charge, led Renee Ellmers and 7 other GOP women to demand a vote be postponed, apparently indefinitely.

Right now, Gov. Mike Pence is the only Republican politician defending this bill. He is looking for a new law to clarify the bill’s intent, as Indiana faces a wave of hostility from powerful corporations that is sick to see, based as it is on a lie. The NCAA weighed in with “concern” about how it affects student athletes and employees. Angie’s List CEO is putting Indianapolis expansion plans on hold to punish the citizens of Indiana.

But on the core message, Pence is speaking truth to a gathering storm of powerful forces. Gov. Pence said, “This is not about legalizing discrimination, it is about restricting the government’s ability to intrude on the religious liberty of our citizens.”

I haven’t weighed in on this bill, in part because I don’t believe its supporters are right that it will help the little baker who doesn’t want to bake a gay wedding cake keep his or her family’s livelihood intact. America’s most distinguished pro-religious liberty scholar, Prof. Doug Laycock, explains why he hopes it might, but doesn’t really think it will, because it hasn’t been interpreted that way in the other 19 states that have RFRAs. Molly Hemingway of The Federalistexplains the people it will help.

Meanwhile Pres. Obama and other Democrats must continue to be pushed to explain why they now oppose the same kind of bill they supported and voted for in the past. What about religious liberty don’t they like any more? Hillary Clinton, what happened to the “maximum feasible accommodation” of free expression of religion your husband and you supported?

But this is a seminal moment for GOP presidential candidates: Will they have the courage to speak truth to power and support protections for religious people from government punishment? Or will they bow to the mainstream media narrative and commit the cardinal sin of declaring unilateral truce?

Speak now, Bush, Walker, Paul, Rubio, Carson, Huckabee, Jindal, etc., because the future of religious liberty in America will depend in part on whether there is at least one political party willing to defend it.
Courage is not optional.

Maggie Gallagher appeared on Ave Maria Radio’s Church and Culture with Deal Hudson to discuss her new blog, ThePulse2016.com. She also discussed the state of the marriage fight in America. You can listen to the full interview below:

The Utah compromise contains way too much legalese for me to comprehensively evaluate it today. But reading the bill, and the response to it from the gay-rights establishment, leads me to say, sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, something I never expected to say: Thanks, Human Rights Campaign.

As readers of this column know, I have become increasingly concerned by the threats to the livelihoods of people known to hold to classical Christian views on sex and marriage.

In a recent column, I pointed to almost a dozen such recent incidents, ranging from Kelvin Cochran to Angela McCaskill, and I also noted: “This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it points to where I think the greatest threats lie: closing down educational and work opportunities to traditionalists who dare to speak.”

This week you could add to that list baseball player Daniel Murphy, who announced he isn’t going to mention his religious beliefs opposing sex outside of Christian marriage any more, after a publicity storm in response to being asked about baseball’s new ambassador for “inclusion,” Billy Bean. (Hat tip: Rod Dreher.)

Celebrities are one thing, but I also didn’t mention in that column Eric Moutsos, the Salt Lake City cop who was disciplined merely for requesting a religious accommodation to a job assignment to ride at the front of a gay-pride parade. Anyway, the list of livelihoods endangered mounts. At an emotional hearing (on both sides) Moutsos just testified this week in favor of the Utah compromise, SB296.

With good reason: because this historic piece of legislation would likely help people like him, and it would especially help people whose jobs are being attacked because they respectfully seek to exercise — off the job — core constitutional rights: to speak, to sign petitions, to write religious books.

Here are the relevant clauses in this bill that looks as if like it will become the law of the land in Utah:

(1) An employee may express the employee’s religious or moral beliefs and commitments in the workplace in a reasonable, non-disruptive, and non-harassing way on equal terms with similar types of expression of beliefs or commitments allowed by the employer in the workplace, unless the expression is in direct conflict with the essential business-related interests of the employer.

(2) An employer may not discharge, demote, terminate, or refuse to hire any person, or retaliate against, harass, or discriminate in matters of compensation or in terms, privileges, and conditions of employment against any person otherwise qualified, for lawful expression or expressive activity outside of the workplace regarding the person’s religious, political, or personal convictions, including convictions about marriage, family, or sexuality, unless the expression or expressive activity is in direct conflict with the essential business-related interests of the employer.

The LDS Church was negotiating from a position of strength: Nothing was going to pass the Utah legislature that members felt would hurt Mormon institutions. But it responded generously, not only protecting employment and housing rights for LGBT individuals, but protecting institutions more typical of other religious communities, not just their own.

A few months before the Supreme Court is likely to rule on gay marriage, the incidents causing concern about what gay marriage will mean for dissenters (especially traditional Christians, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims) multiply:

Gordon College students are banned from tutoring public-school students, because of the college’s embrace of standard orthodox Christian rules (no sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman); the request of its college president for a religious exemption from President Obama has now triggered a possible threat to its accreditation.

Meanwhile, Marquette University (a Jesuit institution) is attempting to strip Professor Scott McAdams of his tenure and his job because he blogged critically about the way a college instructor (and grad student) treated an anti-gay-marriage student.

Kelvin Cochran, whose rags-to-riches rise from Shreveport poverty to police chief of Atlanta is as inspiring as any, was fired for self-publishing for his Bible-study class a book that contains two paragraphs exhorting his fellow Christians to live by Biblical sexual values.

In Lafayette, Calif., parents of 14-year-old public-school students are suing because their children were asked in English class whether their parents would embrace them if they were gay — and then these Christian students were publicly shamed and humiliated when they supported their parents’ values.

A Ford Motor Company worker (contractor) was invited to comment on pro-gay-rights material circulated by the company — and then fired for leaving an anti-sodomy comment on the blog.

Note the similar strategies here: invite or force public comment and then discipline those who say the “wrong” thing.

[...] If the GOP would like to leave a legacy that makes a difference, I would argue for generous anti-discrimination protections for those who favor or oppose gay marriage (unless they work for an organization whose substantial purpose is to favor or oppose gay marriage).

That would be me and about 50 or so other adoring fans who were gathered at the Motion Picture Association of America with Comcast-NBC Universal executive David Cohen to get a first peek at the new NBC television drama A.D., which will air this Easter Sunday.

“Burnett basically invented the reality-show genre,” Cohen said. “He has 112 Emmys and eleven shows currently on the air.” Including my favorite: the groundbreaking pro-entrepreneur, investment show Shark Tank.

I became a fan the first time I watched the original Apprentice. I had no idea Burnett was a Christian or any kind of political conservative. What I noticed was the reason I found the show so profoundly and oddly compelling, despite my anti-reality-show snobbery: It tapped into a deep dramatic narrative that I almost never saw on TV or in the movie theater, the drama that once launched a series of Horatio Alger best sellers, the drama of “making it” in business. In Hollywood, the businessman was usually the villain, not the protagonist of a moral drama. This kind of story was invisible, despite being the story of so many young people’s lives.

[...] Burnett’s first venture in broadcasting. The Bible, in 2013, gained 100 million viewers and became the most-watched miniseries of the year. In introducing A.D., Burnett proudly pointed to the Academy award–winning team he is able to assemble (“This is not some crappy little Christian programming”) and called the show “The Bible meets Game of Thrones meets House of Cards.”

I should not be surprised a man of this intense creative genius knows the story he is telling. “With two shows I now have on television, A.D. and Shark Tank, we are telling the story of America: Free enterprise and the Bible!” Burnett said.

It’s been a good week for Governor Scott Walker. He received rave media reviews for his speech at Steve King’s Iowa Freedom Fest.

An unnamed “Republican Party observer” informed the Washington Times that Walker was a smash in Iowa, proving his appeal to all parts of the conservative coalition.

Slate columnist Jamelle Bouie even speculated that the Kochs’ $889 billion network might act as a counter-establishment to the Bush and Romney machines, and “give Walker better ground to stand on. He can run an insurgent campaign, and unlike Mike Huckabee in the 2008 race, he won’t run out of cash. Suddenly, there’s a real alternative to the original consensus candidate . . . ”

Marco Rubio, it turns out, won the informal straw poll of Koch-networked donors at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, Calif., according to Politico, but, no matter, the Walker Boomlet was on.

When I analyze speeches by would-be presidents I am looking for two things: Is the candidate in touch with American voters’ principal economic pain? Does he or she understand that the big problem the middle class faces is the declining standard of living, caused by the one-two punch of wage stagnation and mild but persistent inflation?

Before you can provide a plausible answer, you have to get the diagnosis right. At this stage it is for me the first and most important sign of potential political success against the Democrats.

For me, in other words, this issue functions as a girl’s beauty did for Lorelei Lee: “It isn’t everything. But my goodness it certainly helps!”

In the late 1980s, I attended a speech by my friend, the brilliant George Gilder, in which he said: “When I was a single man, all I thought about was sex, and all I wrote about was sex. Now that I’m a married man, all I think about is money, and all I write about is money.”

Marriage doesn’t quite have the same effect on women, apparently, or on me at any rate, because I have been very slow to spend much time thinking about money, either before or after marriage, but it appears to me now that Republicans ought to.

A debate took place last week between Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson on whether Reagan’s supply-side economics had anything to do with the economic boom let loose in the 1980s. Krugman argued that the credit belongs solely to Paul Volcker for squeezing inflation out of the economy. Samuelson agreed that monetary policy was the key, but said that Reagan deserved credit for supporting Volcker while he did the necessary painful work. Both agreed, however, that monetary policy is the key to growth.

Nowadays inflation is not the issue. “Secular stagnation” — meaning widespread stagnation that might well be permanent — and deflation are what the central bankers are worried about.

Consider for example what Larry Summers said this week at Davos: The great danger is that Europe is poised to become Japan and will thus experience a decade or more of economic stagnation. In this context, Summers supports the newly announced European quantitative easing, on the theory that doing something about “secular stagnation” is better than doing nothing. But he warned us not to expect much from it. “I come back to the central importance of demand,” he said. “The focus has to be on providing adequate economic energy, adequate demand, so we avoid these liquidity traps and avoid the problem of secular stagnation. What is striking in Europe today is how much it looks like Japan, seven years in after the bubble. I think Europe is on its way to being the new Japan unless there is a substantial departure.”